The Doctor and Churchill

This weeks theme on the Tando blog is all about the men in our life.  

I used their chevron 'burning rubber' mask, which is 3 chevrons wide so I moved it up and lined it up and respritzed so that I could cover the whole of the centre of my page.  I used a mix of cosmic shimmer for the bright green and then tattered angels denim and walnut gold which are a little more subtle.  The papers are all from Marion Smiths Nirvana collection, she has loads of bits that you can cut out like little tags, journal spots, tickets - so I had great fun doing that and then distressing and inking my papers on the bigger pieces I layered up behind the photo.  I also used some Tando chipboard in the way of the cogs and key - for the cogs I used gelatos and some water to set them, and the key was just inked with distress ink.  The you and me would veneer is by prima as is the alphabet.

The picture is from one of the money raising activities at school when the children were invited to go in dressed as someone they liked/looked up to.  My kids choose their characters with little help from me, I obviously got involved in the dressing up part of it and got to make a sonic screwdriver using some of my gems :)

Together

Another page from last year made with more Teresa Collins Memorabilia (all in my ATDML kit)- I love the colours and have used up most of my papers now!  For this page it was my first play with the bazzill woodgrain card stock and I do love the subtle effect that the woodgrain adds to the paper, and so the photo had to be an outdoors one.

I started with all my scraps and some of the die cuts, working out how I could layer them behind my photo.  Once I had it worked out I then applied tea dye distress ink on a sponge to the paper to bring out a little more of the woodgrain and just as something different to spray inks! I then distressed and crumpled the corners of my page, adding some of the smaller pieces of paper on foam pads.  The flowers are from prima and the alphabet is by glitz.  The final touch was a few blue sequins to help draw your eye into the photo.

Birthday Mornings

Another Teresa Collins Memorabilia page (using beautiful papers from my DT kit from ATDML), I went with stripes for this one - I still really struggle to be completely straight when I do pages with this - which is probably why I like to tear and do messy things!

Once I had laid out the stripes I then die cut some stars from vellum and also the Teresa Collins papers, I embossed the vellum stars with the swiss dots cuttlebug folder - and the star set I have come in for different sizes so they are perfect for layering.  Once I had my photo in place I then added the layered stars, and some of the die cuts and embellishments from the range, as well as some prima lace (this beige one is a firm favourite of mine!).  The grid paper was the perfect stripe for journalling and I cut out the title on my craft robo using the free Ali Edwards font and welding the letters together.

This page documents our early morning birthday routine with the kids, presents in bed the minute you are up!

Also I am up on Created by ATDML with a page I made with some of the brand new Marion Smith papers that they have in store - loving them!  Here is the link.

TC Class - Dancing with the Sea

Here is one of the pages I taught at the last A Trip Down Memory Lane Retreat - it's using Teresa Collins' Memorabilia line, I love the colours and designs in this pack.  For the main page I had a go at covering 2/3rds of the card stock in strips of the different papers, adding some chevrons to add a little more interest.  I covered the bit where all the paper ends with a paper ribbon which we made out of different sized ovals layered up.  

The picture is from our holiday of my son running in and out of the waves - some of the photos were over exposed (as I didn't check the camera settings) and I really loved the effect so I had a play with this in photoshop and love the colour the sea came out!

I also wanted to include some of the project life style pages too, as I have loads of pictures, but I love the single page layout too, so to put them both together works really well and it also means that I add more journalling about everything that happens.  To link the pages as well as using the same papers I used some of the chevrons and stripes from the layout.

2013 - a little review

The challenge for this fortnight is to look back over the previous year, I did this in pictures (I was initially worried that I would not have one for every month, but I did and had lots more I could have used!).

With the 12 photos the easiest way to lay them out was in a grid and it works nicely with the numbers of the year in the centre.  I used strips of Glitz's Finley collection, I love the bright colours in this range, and layered up all the papers - using the remnants from my strips to layer behind photos.  I decided to use wood veneers as my embellishments as I had different ones that suited the seasons and events that happened, and I used my Simple Stories month stamps, cutting them out to label the photos with when they were taken.

If you fancy joining in this month, and there is the chance to win a prize too, as well as see all the other wonderful inspiration then here is the link.

Happy New Year

I have a back log of pages to show you, but I thought I would start with a Christmassy one - I am also working on a December daily album too which I can show some bits of (if you want a look at the first few pages then head over to the ATDML blog - here is the link).  This is a page I made for the Studio Challenges, and it was to use a tag - there is a new challenge going up on Sunday so you have a day to have a go at this one if you want!

I started by misting my card stock with water and then added some green cosmic shimmer mist, and I pooled it a little behind the photo so I got some drips to run down the paper.  When I work with mist I always work out how my page is going to look and layer it all up on the card stock, then take it off and mist and then reassemble it.  Having misted I then did a little stamping with some beautiful paper mania Christmas stamps in black ink, and not using an acrylic block so that I could roll the stamp and not get clear edges.  I then layered up loads of Teresa Collins Santa's List papers - lots of strips, some I punched, a little MME washi tape in there too and red lace.  I used the journal card 'its the most wonderful time of the year' as a pocket for my tag.  The tag was cut out of kraft card stock and then edged with some MME washi tape and one of the die cuts from the Teresa Collins paper pack.  Then a few more little embellishments like the prima wooden tree and some more die cuts and a little silver angel.

I want to wish you all a Happy New Year.